Monthly Archives: May 2016

In reply to a Freedom of Information request, the Royal Veterinary College, which calls itself “the largest and longest-established vet school in the English-speaking world”, has recently made public its part in vivisection. During 2014, for instance, it conducted “procedures” on 9,589 animals. All the cats (57) and nearly all the dogs (80 out of 82) involved in these procedures were companion animals, and the research was (as far as I can understand) a quite proper extension of the treatment being provided for them by RVC vets – “clinical” research, in short. These companion animals were returned home afterwards. That leaves about 9,450 animals, including pigs, rabbits, sheep, and domestic fowl. These ones were used and killed afterwards in the normal prodigal way of experimental laboratories. Much of this research was “basic” research into physiology and pathology, aimed not at devising or testing therapies, but at producing the sort of general knowledge which, so the RVC claims, “underpins both veterinary and human medicine”. A large part of the “applied” research was specifically directed towards human medicine.

The RVC states, in its defence, that it “shares society’s desire to minimise the use of animal experimentation and increase the use of scientifically validated alternative methods that reduce, refine or replace the use of animal models.” So this organisation – dedicated, one would suppose, to the health and welfare of animals – thinks it reasonable to have to reassure us that it’s not less concerned about their suffering than the rest of the community is. And unfortunately we do indeed need such reassurance. For this is an organisation signed up to the vivisectors’ new PR collective, the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research. And it isn’t just doing its own research on animals, but has a Contract Research Unit which is keen to provide “a range of services for both animal and human health-related companies, ranging from small biotechnology to large pharmaceutical as well as pet nutrition companies.” Vivisection for hire, in fact.

Nothing so new about that, of course. Some of the most notorious names in contract research of this kind – Huntingdon Life Sciences, for instance, and Wickham Laboratories – were set up by vets. And even veterinary training, the RVC’s core business, has its own tradition of betrayal. In fact it was the shocking revelation of what was being done to horses at the Alfort veterinary school near Paris which inspired the earliest anti-vivisection campaigns in the 1860s. This same Alfort establishment, incidentally, prides itself these days on possessing a campus “dotted with several monuments and statues that remind visitors of figures who have worked for the betterment of humanity”. And that of course reflects the thinking about animals at such places. The grand project is to do humanity good, each animal species being dedicated (by nature, God, evolution, custom? We aren’t told) to serve that project in its special way, with help or, if necessary, coercion from the vets. Indeed, the very concept of species seems to have been re-modelled to suit this convenient taxonomy of involuntary service, for we’re told that the RVC’s contract service will provide biomedical data, or whatever other information is wanted, on “cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, poultry, companion animals and laboratory species”. A dog, it’s clear from RVC practice and policy statement, may fall into either of the latter two categories: ‘species’, then, is not a scientific term here, but a commercial term (‘Who paid for this dog?’).

Meanwhile there is at least one vet retained by every laboratory whose job it is to supervise the welfare of the animals: that is, the “Named Vet” required by the 1986 Act. One might think of him or her in police procedural terms, as the ‘nice’ vet. There certainly was such a nice vet in Oxford University’s laboratories, until recently. An interview which she gave to Nature in 2006 was headed ‘Caught in the Middle’. The ‘middle’ she meant was that between two opposing parties, the researchers and the anti-vivisectionists. However, it’s clear that she was more problematically caught between two opposing obligations, the one as an employee co-operating in the work of a research laboratory, and the other as someone who promises at graduation to put the interests of the animals “ABOVE” (the capitals are there in the graduating declaration) those of clients and employers. That Sarah Wolfensohn really did take this latter obligation seriously no doubt had its part in her abrupt departure and replacement by a Biomedical Services department, headed by an in-comer from – of all ominous places – Huntingdon Life Sciences. Sarah Wolfensohn is now Professor of Animal Welfare at the University of Surrey.

It’s quite possible, incidentally, for a Named Vet to be also an experimental scientist, and so to be supervising, as a vet registered under the Veterinary Surgeon’s Act, his or her own work as a scientist licensed under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act. I don’t know quite who or what’s in the middle of that crazed situation, but it can be taken as an image of the veterinary profession in general, ambivalently serving and exploiting its patients.

One of James Herriot’s books of stories about veterinary practice was titled If Only They Could Talk. But the wish should really be ‘if only they could pay’, because the vet’s essential dilemma is always that the commissioning and paying is done by someone other than the patient, someone who therefore decides what constitutes being well enough in the particular case. Thus a recent issue of the British Veterinary Association’s journal, Veterinary Record (February 2016, vol.178 (6), p.141), has a report on an apparently new pathology observed in broiler chickens, a condition named – with wretchedly evocative force – ‘wooden breast’. In case you wondered why it mattered, the second sentence establishes the context: “This condition is reported to cause significant economic losses because it causes rejection from human consumption.” The cover of the journal illustrates the point with a photograph of a crowded broiler shed. This scene, we suppose, is what the vet must help to make profitable. So ‘being well enough’, in the broiler case, means being alive and eatable six or seven weeks after birth.

It’s a puzzle to know what the Record’s readers, most of whom are likely to be in small-animal practice looking after the health of animals hardly less comfortably placed in life than themselves, think about such a chaos of values. Perhaps they have simply become inured to it, but of course there are vets who do actively object, and who even take a lead in animal advocacy (VERO’s André Menache is one such). The good news now is that the profession as a whole means to follow their example. That cover photograph on the Veterinary Record may not after all be intended as an uncritical illustration of the status quo, but rather as a challenge or query, for the editorial in that same issue announces that the profession’s guiding associations, the BVA and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (not to be confused with the RVC), are determined that the role of the vet in animal welfare shall change for the better. There’s a welcome and portentous revision going on, which I hope to say more about next time.

Radio 4’s The Moral Maze is usually interesting, despite its confrontational format. The panel of ‘interrogators’ constantly interrupt the guests as they struggle to complete a single sentence. In the 1990s the historian David Starkey used his appearances on The Moral Maze to his own advantage. After the tabloids labelled him “the rudest man in Britain” he was delighted and stated: “It’s worth at least £100,000 a year.” Even worse than Starkey is the long-standing chairman Michael Buerk, as he is accountable for several heinous crimes against good taste and decency. Firstly, he’s directly responsible for creating Saint Bob Geldof the humanitarian campaigner. Buerk’s BBC TV news report (23/10/84) about the Ethiopian famine instigated the Band Aid record, and the 1985 Live Aid concerts. Buerk’s bombastic commentary (“a Biblical famine”) is celebrated as a landmark broadcast, but this and most of the subsequent media reports about Ethiopia made little or absolutely no attempt to understand the politics of famine. Crucially, it was rarely mentioned that a substantial amount of grain was still being produced in the horn of Africa, but most of it was being exported to the West for animal feed.

Live Aid (the first global pop charity event) established the idea of huge portentous charity concerts as a panacea for all the world’s problems. Buying the crappy Band Aid record or sending donations to Live Aid allowed people to feel very good about themselves, and then they could instantly forget about starving Africans. Any proposal for eating less meat, or going veggie as an effective method of alleviating hunger, would have been laughable in 1985. Today there is more awareness about the unsustainability of meat production, but global demand for meat is still increasing and about 45% of the global grain harvest is wasted as animal feed. It’s over 30 years since Live Aid, and nothing much has changed in Ethiopia, although Bob Geldof is now very rich (he avoids paying any UK tax).

The edition of The Moral Maze (17/2/16) tackled the subject of boycotts. In his introduction Buerk employed his trademark sneering tone as he dismissed various campaigns, including one against the use of kangaroo skin for football boots. Subsequently, Claire Fox (from the very unpretentiously titled Institute of Ideas) made this semi-literate statement: “A lot of animal rights activists boycott pharmaceutical companies, etc, because they believe in animal rights. You could say that [for] the overall good of society it’s that actually animal experimentation is what’s needed [sic] for medicine. So if those boycotts are successful, if they cause enough trouble for the firms that they actually stop doing something, then society is going to be damaged. What’s ethical about that?”

It’s ironic that she poses the ethical question, because of

course ethics is the key issue in any debate about vivisection. But for Claire Fox, apparently, ethics is a purely human affair, its function being to provide “what’s needed” by human society. Unfortunately, her speciesist viewpoint probably reflects what most people think about animal testing. It certainly reflects the thinking of chairman Buerk, an intemperate enemy of the animal rights movement.

Meanwhile, Michael Buerk is attempting to emulate the greed and hubris of Sir Bob. He does voice-overs for TV adverts (a very lucrative business). In 2014 he “went into the jungle” as a contestant on the reality TV show I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. This involves a bunch of so-called celebrities being stranded in the Springbok National Park in Australia. They compete against each other to avoid an early exit, and have to endure various unpleasant trials, some of which involve eating live insects. Buerk was paid £150,000 for taking part, and conceded that he only did it for the money (well, he had to admit that didn’t he?). It all sounds like the lowest level of worthless and demeaning entertainment (but obviously I’ve never watched it). It’s a TV show which manages to exploit both humans and animals. The ‘celebs’ themselves are there for the publicity and a fat fee, even though they are exposed to 24 hour scrutiny and potential ridicule. But why does anybody want to watch this distasteful voyeurism? They must enjoy seeing these individuals going through a humiliating experience, and perhaps this echoes the pleasure that some humans derive from hunting and shooting wild animals in similar settings. Anyway, this TV show typifies the sort of thing that Buerk himself would usually regard with contempt. After all he is a highly respected journalist and broadcaster, but then (as they say) everybody has their price.